ight as first I saw them long ago; and from a
steamer's deck I watch again, and again count, a train composed of
twenty-one locomotives, moving ominous and sinister on their new
errand. That was July 19, 1870. France had declared war on Prussia
that day. Mobilization was beginning before my eyes. I was ten.

Dates and anniversaries also perform the same office as music and
perfumes. This is the ninth of June. This day, last year, I was in the
heart of Germany. The beautiful, peaceful scene is plain yet. It seems
as if I never could forget it or cease to love it. Often last June I
thought how different the sights I was then seeing were from those
twenty-one locomotives rolling their heavy threat along the banks of
the Rhine. And, for the mere curiosity of it, I looked in my German
diary to find if I had recorded anything on last June ninth that
should be worth repeating on this June ninth.

Well, at the end of the day's jotted routine were the following
sentences: "I am constantly more impressed with the Germans. They are
a massive, on-going, steady race. Some unifying slow fire is at work
in them. This can be felt, somehow." Such was my American impression,
innocent altogether, deeply innocent, and ignorant of what the slow
fire was going to become. So were the peasants and the other humbler
subjects of the Empire who gave me this daily impression; they were
innocent and ignorant too. Therefore is the German tragedy deeper even
than the Belgian.

On June twenty-eighth I was still in the heart of Germany, but at
another beautiful place, where further signs of Germany's great
thrift, order and competence had met me at every turn. It was a
Sunday, cloudless and hot, with the mountains full of odors from the
pines. After two hours of strolling I reentered our hotel to find a
group of travelers before the bulletin board. Here we read in silence
the news of a political assassination. The silence was prolonged, not
because this news touched any of us nationally but because any such
crime must touch and shock all thoughtful persons.

At last the silence was broken by an old German traveler, who said:
"That is the match which will set all Europe in a blaze." We did not
know who he was. None of our party ever knew. On the next morning this
party took its untroubled way toward France, a party of innocent,
ignorant Americans, in whose minds lingered no thought of the old
German's remark. That evening we slept in Rheims. Our win